Spider's Song
by ncfan
Summary: I can still hear him singing, singing sweet tunes into my head... Anna Sheridan speaks.


Eh, I'm not even sure if this counts as horror. I was watching Star Trek: First Contact when I started writing this; the whole thing with the Borg got me to wondering. Anyway, about the horror thing, I think this has the potential to disturb some people.

Well, anyway, enjoy. Anna's a messed up lady.

Disclaimer: I don't own Babylon 5.

* * *

I was terrified when I was first implanted into the vessel (What is terror, anyhow? I no longer understand this primitive sensation, this crude feeling of fleshly infant civilizations). I was weak then, young and ignorant, a crude, clumsy being amongst graceful wraiths. I was forced into the vessel.

I have heard tales, strange tales that have no meaning and absolutely no ring of emotion, of vessels that reject their hosts. It did not happen to me. I remember the strange sensation of the glittering black sliding over my skin, morphing and skittering and changing to accommodate my shape; the port where the last host had lain was too large; it had to be adjusted.

I think I may have screamed. It was all so strange, and I was still bound by the shackles of petty human emotion; I was frightened, my heart rate spiraling out of control.

I could not move my legs or my arms; I was spread-eagle in an onyx sea, floating to no end.

Then, there was nothing. I could hear a voice, singing in my mind. It was… words can not describe it. The words are nothing that you would understand, you who are still chained by flesh and your own pitiful understanding. I did not like it at first; at first, I resisted. I tried not to listen. I thought of my life, my life where I had been.

But I could not deny the siren call ringing so clearly and so beautifully, speaking to me without words, so close and yet so far. I gave up (and that is such an _inadequate_ phrase; it seems so ungrateful; the song freed me, it freed me from everything that I had feared to lose) inch by inch, heeding by notes and melody. It, the vessel, _he_, would show me everything.

And he did. I saw things I could never describe to you; things of wild and spectacular beauty. My words, my voice, my song, my _essence_, commingled with him to create a dual voice, so full of understanding and truth.

But there was a catch. He wanted me to belong to _him_, and him alone. He wanted me to live for him above all others; he wanted me to love him and desire only him.

My husband's name had been like a mantra to me in the early days, giving me the audacity to resist fate.

_John…_

_John…_

_John…_

John… John… Is that truly his name? I do not know anymore; I can not recall his face. Ours was an imperfect love; I was right to cast it off. There was unhappiness between us, creating divisions and deep divides within us. The vessel turned me away from my flawed human love, to something stronger, something purer. With the vessel, there is only union, union of the purest kind.

When we moved, we moved as one. When we flew among the stars, I saw the same thing he did. He spoke his words in my mind, and I thought only of him; there was nothing more important. There was nothing else that mattered. I loved him, as much as I could love. The human whom I had spent an ephemeral amount of years with, barely a fleeting moment in the existence of the vessel, was not important anymore.

Eventually, I learned to sing back to him. My voice was weak and limited; a raw cacophony in light of the fluid, rippling, chiming notes that played around my head and the hollow of my heart. My voice was ugly, so ugly, but he did not care.

Over time, the song grew only more lovely; when our songs intertwined like lovers in the night, mortal beings would have wept at its transcendent beauty.

All the while, I could feel something falling away from me. I wasn't sure what it was; I think it may have been vital in my old life. But it mattered not; whatever it was, I didn't need it as long as I was with _him._

When we were separated, I screamed again, the first true scream to ever flee my lips. My love, my life… How could they take that away from me? I was nothing without him, how could they not realize that?

How could they realize that I did not even need a name when I was with him? (My name, my name, I remember it no more; it's a distant memory of a distant life full of ugliness and ignorance; I am better off without it to bind me to my fleshy prison)

The vessel reached for me and tried to keep us from falling away from each other; I reached and reached, but we were torn apart.

I will never be the same; I will never be whole again. The thing that made me matter has been left behind with him, to hold and to cherish, because I do not know how.

But there is a small moment of comfort. Because on the darkest of nights when there is no moon, when I drift off to sleep, I can hear him singing, singing sweet tunes on the edge of my subconscious, a far off melody carried on a cool gust of air, like the weaving of a spider's gossamer web.

I can still hear him singing.


End file.
